1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process for the production of pasta products in serving portions, with the pasta products being separated into serving portions before packing into the package.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As a rule, pasta products are packed in larger quantities established purely by weight. The market requirement for pasta products packed on the basis of eating portions led to the so-called coils and/or nests that today already make up a considerable proportion of the offering of pasta products. Such nests and/or coils are produced in a nest machine and/or coil laying machine arranged after the pasta product press. A "nest" is a pasta configuration formed, usually with the thinner pastas, by dropping the continuous string of pasta into a coiled, undulating, criss-crossed pattern that has the appearance of a birds nest, and dried in this shape. Nest and/or coil pasta products fall out of the nest or coil laying machine into a bowl-shaped receptacle. A number of such receptacles are attached to an endless transport belt with which the nests and/or coils are fed through a drying contrivance. This drying contrivance can be either a predryer only or a predryer and a final dryer. If the drying contrivance is a predryer only, then the nests and/or coils are removed from the bowl-shaped receptacle ahead of the final dryer, laid onto a conveying contrivance and fed through the final dryer on this conveying contrivance. However, the nests in the bowl-shaped receptacles can, subsequent to the predryer, also be fed through the final dryer and finish-dried in the receptacles. After the final dryer, the nests and/or coils are laid onto a conveyor belt or thrown off and delivered to a packing station. This known process has various disadvantages. When removing the nests and/or coils from the bowl-shaped receptacles and when packing, they are subjected to mechanical stresses that lead to a relatively high proportion of scrap. This loss of weight must be compensated for by the addition of fragments when packing the nests, which is detrimental to the appearance of the packed product. This proportion of scrap increases still further if the nests are stacked after removal from the bowl-shaped receptacles and prior to packing.